Yesterday, for example, I was at a
luncheon
party.
Twain - Speeches
A slip of
the tongue would be the most that you would get from me. I have always
tried hard and faithfully to improve my English and never to degrade it.
I always try to use the best English to describe what I think and what I
feel, or what I don't feel and what I don't think.
I am not one of those who in expressing opinions confine themselves to
facts. I don't know anything that mars good literature so completely as
too much truth. Facts contain a deal of poetry, but you can't use too
many of them without damaging your literature. I love all literature,
and as long as I am a doctor of literature--I have suggested to you for
twenty years I have been diligently trying to improve my own literature,
and now, by virtue of the University of Oxford, I mean to doctor
everybody else's.
Now I think I ought to apologize for my clothes. At home I venture
things that I am not permitted by my family to venture in foreign parts.
I was instructed before I left home and ordered to refrain from white
clothes in England. I meant to keep that command fair and clean, and I
would have done it if I had been in the habit of obeying instructions,
but I can't invent a new process in life right away. I have not had
white clothes on since I crossed the ocean until now.
In these three or four weeks I have grown so tired of gray and black
that you have earned my gratitude in permitting me to come as I have. I
wear white clothes in the depth of winter in my home, but I don't go out
in the streets in them. I don't go out to attract too much attention.
I like to attract some, and always I would like to be dressed so that I
may be more conspicuous than anybody else.
If I had been an ancient Briton, I would not have contented myself with
blue paint, but I would have bankrupted the rainbow. I so enjoy gay
clothes in which women clothe themselves that it always grieves me when
I go to the opera to see that, while women look like a flower-bed, the
men are a few gray stumps among them in their black evening dress. These
are two or three reasons why I wish to wear white clothes: When I find
myself in assemblies like this, with everybody in black clothes, I know
I possess something that is superior to everybody else's. Clothes are
never clean. You don't know whether they are clean or not, because you
can't see.
Here or anywhere you must scour your head every two or three days or
it is full of grit. Your clothes must collect just as much dirt as your
hair. If you wear white clothes you are clean, and your cleaning bill
gets so heavy that you have to take care. I am proud to say that I can
wear a white suit of clothes without a blemish for three days. If you
need any further instruction in the matter of clothes I shall be glad to
give it to you. I hope I have convinced some of you that it is just as
well to wear white clothes as any other kind. I do not want to boast. I
only want to make you understand that you are not clean.
As to age, the fact that I am nearly seventy-two years old does not
clearly indicate how old I am, because part of every day--it is with
me as with you, you try to describe your age, and you cannot do it.
Sometimes you are only fifteen; sometimes you are twenty-five. It is
very seldom in a day that I am seventy-two years old. I am older now
sometimes than I was when I used to rob orchards; a thing which I would
not do to-day--if the orchards were watched. I am so glad to be here
to-night. I am so glad to renew with the Savages that now ancient time
when I first sat with a company of this club in London in 1872. That is
a long time ago. But I did stay with the Savages a night in London long
ago, and as I had come into a very strange land, and was with friends,
as I could see, that has always remained in my mind as a peculiarly
blessed evening, since it brought me into contact with men of my own
kind and my own feelings.
I am glad to be here, and to see you all again, because it is very
likely that I shall not see you again. It is easier than I thought to
come across the Atlantic. I have been received, as you know, in the most
delightfully generous way in England ever since I came here. It keeps
me choked up all the time. Everybody is so generous, and they do seem
to give you such a hearty welcome. Nobody in the world can appreciate it
higher than I do. It did not wait till I got to London, but when I came
ashore at Tilbury the stevedores on the dock raised the first welcome--a
good and hearty welcome from the men who do the heavy labor in the
world, and save you and me having to do it. They are the men who with
their hands build empires and make them prosper. It is because of them
that the others are wealthy and can live in luxury. They received me
with a "Hurrah! " that went to my heart. They are the men that build
civilization, and without them no civilization can be built. So I came
first to the authors and creators of civilization, and I blessedly end
this happy meeting with the Savages who destroy it.
GENERAL MILES AND THE DOG
Mr. Clemens was the guest of honor at a dinner given by the
Pleiades Club at the Hotel Brevoort, December 22, 1907. The
toastmaster introduced the guest of the evening with a high
tribute to his place in American literature, saying that he was
dear to the hearts of all Americans.
It is hard work to make a speech when you have listened to compliments
from the powers in authority. A compliment is a hard text to preach to.
When the chairman introduces me as a person of merit, and when he says
pleasant things about me, I always feel like answering simply that what
he says is true; that it is all right; that, as far as I am concerned,
the things he said can stand as they are. But you always have to say
something, and that is what frightens me.
I remember out in Sydney once having to respond to some complimentary
toast, and my one desire was to turn in my tracks like any other
worm--and run, for it. I was remembering that occasion at a later date
when I had to introduce a speaker. Hoping, then, to spur his speech by
putting him, in joke, on the defensive, I accused him in my introduction
of everything I thought it impossible for him to have committed. When I
finished there was an awful calm. I had been telling his life history by
mistake.
One must keep up one's character. Earn a character first if you can,
and if you can't, then assume one. From the code of morals I have been
following and revising and revising for seventy-two years I remember
one detail. All my life I have been honest--comparatively honest. I could
never use money I had not made honestly--I could only lend it.
Last spring I met General Miles again, and he commented on the fact that
we had known each other thirty years. He said it was strange that we had
not met years before, when we had both been in Washington. At that point
I changed the subject, and I changed it with art. But the facts are
these:
I was then under contract for my Innocents Abroad, but did not have a
cent to live on while I wrote it. So I went to Washington to do a little
journalism. There I met an equally poor friend, William Davidson, who
had not a single vice, unless you call it a vice in a Scot to love
Scotch. Together we devised the first and original newspaper syndicate,
selling two letters a week to twelve newspapers and getting $1 a letter.
That $24 a week would have been enough for us--if we had not had to
support the jug.
But there was a day when we felt that we must have $3 right away--$3
at once. That was how I met the General. It doesn't matter now what
we wanted so much money at one time for, but that Scot and I did
occasionally want it. The Scot sent me out one day to get it. He had a
great belief in Providence, that Scottish friend of mine. He said: "The
Lord will provide. "
I had given up trying to find the money lying about, and was in a hotel
lobby in despair, when I saw a beautiful unfriended dog. The dog saw
me, too, and at once we became acquainted. Then General Miles came in,
admired the dog, and asked me to price it. I priced it at $3. He offered
me an opportunity to reconsider the value of the beautiful animal, but I
refused to take more than Providence knew I needed. The General carried
the dog to his room.
Then came in a sweet little middle-aged man, who at once began looking
around the lobby.
"Did you lose a dog? " I asked. He said he had.
"I think I could find it," I volunteered, "for a small sum. "
"'How much? '" he asked. And I told him $3.
He urged me to accept more, but I did not wish to outdo Providence. Then
I went to the General's room and asked for the dog back. He was very
angry, and wanted to know why I had sold him a dog that did not belong
to me.
"That's a singular question to ask me, sir," I replied. "Didn't you ask
me to sell him? You started it. " And he let me have him. I gave him back
his $3 and returned the dog, collect, to its owner. That second $3 I
carried home to the Scot, and we enjoyed it, but the first $3, the money
I got from the General, I would have had to lend.
The General seemed not to remember my part in that adventure, and I
never had the heart to tell him about it.
WHEN IN DOUBT, TELL THE TRUTH
Mark Twain's speech at the dinner of the "Freundschaft
Society," March 9, 1906, had as a basis the words of
introduction used by Toastmaster Frank, who, referring to
Pudd'nhead Wilson, used the phrase, "When in doubt, tell the
truth. "
MR. CHAIRMAN, Mr. PUTZEL, AND GENTLEMEN OF THE FREUNDSCHAFT,--That maxim
I did invent, but never expected it to be applied to me. I did say,
"When you are in doubt," but when I am in doubt myself I use more
sagacity.
Mr. Grout suggested that if I have anything to say against Mr. Putzel,
or any criticism of his career or his character, I am the last person to
come out on account of that maxim and tell the truth. That is altogether
a mistake.
I do think it is right for other people to be virtuous so that they can
be happy hereafter, but if I knew every impropriety that even Mr. Putzel
has committed in his life, I would not mention one of them. My judgment
has been maturing for seventy years, and I have got to that point where
I know better than that.
Mr. Putzel stands related to me in a very tender way (through the tax
office), and it does not behoove me to say anything which could by any
possibility militate against that condition of things.
Now, that word--taxes, taxes, taxes! I have heard it to-night. I have
heard it all night. I wish somebody would change that subject; that is a
very sore subject to me.
I was so relieved when judge Leventritt did find something that was not
taxable--when he said that the commissioner could not tax your patience.
And that comforted me. We've got so much taxation. I don't know of
a single foreign product that enters this country untaxed except the
answer to prayer.
On an occasion like this the proprieties require that you merely pay
compliments to the guest of the occasion, and I am merely here to pay
compliments to the guest of the occasion, not to criticise him in any
way, and I can say only complimentary things to him.
When I went down to the tax office some time ago, for the first time
in New York, I saw Mr. Putzel sitting in the "Seat of Perjury. " I
recognized him right away. I warmed to him on the spot. I didn't
know that I had ever seen him before, but just as soon as I saw him I
recognized him. I had met him twenty-five years before, and at that time
had achieved a knowledge of his abilities and something more than that.
I thought: "Now, this is the man whom I saw twenty-five years ago. "
On that occasion I not only went free at his hands, but carried off
something more than that. I hoped it would happen again.
It was twenty-five years ago when I saw a young clerk in Putnam's
bookstore. I went in there and asked for George Haven Putnam, and handed
him my card, and then the young man said Mr. Putnam was busy and I
couldn't see him. Well, I had merely called in a social way, and so it
didn't matter.
I was going out when I saw a great big, fat, interesting-looking book
lying there, and I took it up. It was an account of the invasion
of England in the fourteenth century by the Preaching Friar, and it
interested me.
I asked him the price of it, and he said four dollars.
"Well," I said, "what discount do you allow to publishers? "
He said: "Forty percent. off. "
I said: "All right, I am a publisher. "
He put down the figure, forty per cent. off, on a card.
Then I said: "What discount do you allow to authors? "
He said: "Forty per cent. off. "
"Well," I said, "set me down as an author. "
"Now," said I, "what discount do you allow to the clergy? "
He said: "Forty per cent. off. "
I said to him that I was only on the road, and that I was studying for
the ministry. I asked him wouldn't he knock off twenty per cent. for
that. He set down the figure, and he never smiled once.
I was working off these humorous brilliancies on him and getting no
return--not a scintillation in his eye, not a spark of recognition of
what I was doing there. I was almost in despair.
I thought I might try him once more, so I said "Now, I am also a member
of the human race. Will you let me have the ten per cent. off for that? "
He set it down, and never smiled.
Well, I gave it up. I said: "There is my card with my address on it,
but I have not any money with me. Will you please send the bill to
Hartford? " I took up the book and was going away.
He said: "Wait a minute. There is forty cents coming to you. "
When I met him in the tax office I thought maybe I could make something
again, but I could not. But I had not any idea I could when I came, and
as it turned out I did get off entirely free.
I put up my hand and made a statement. It gave me a good deal of pain
to do that. I was not used to it. I was born and reared in the higher
circles of Missouri, and there we don't do such things--didn't in my
time, but we have got that little matter settled--got a sort of tax
levied on me.
Then he touched me. Yes, he touched me this time, because he
cried--cried! He was moved to tears to see that I, a virtuous person only
a year before, after immersion for one year--during one year in the New
York morals--had no more conscience than a millionaire.
THE DAY WE CELEBRATE
ADDRESS AT THE FOURTH-OF-JULY DINNER OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY,
LONDON, 1899.
I noticed in Ambassador Choate's speech that he said: "You may be
Americans or Englishmen, but you cannot be both at the same time. " You
responded by applause.
Consider the effect of a short residence here. I find the Ambassador
rises first to speak to a toast, followed by a Senator, and I come
third. What a subtle tribute that to monarchial influence of the country
when you place rank above respectability!
I was born modest, and if I had not been things like this would force it
upon me. I understand it quite well. I am here to see that between them
they do justice to the day we celebrate, and in case they do not I must
do it myself. But I notice they have considered this day merely from one
side--its sentimental, patriotic, poetic side. But it has another side.
It has a commercial, a business side that needs reforming. It has a
historical side.
I do not say "an" historical side, because I am speaking the American
language. I do not see why our cousins should continue to say "an"
hospital, "an" historical fact, "an" horse. It seems to me the Congress
of Women, now in session, should look to it. I think "an" is having a
little too much to do with it. It comes of habit, which accounts for
many things.
Yesterday, for example, I was at a luncheon party. At the end of the
party a great dignitary of the English Established Church went away half
an hour before anybody else and carried off my hat. Now, that was an
innocent act on his part. He went out first, and of course had the
choice of hats. As a rule I try to get out first myself. But I hold that
it was an innocent, unconscious act, due, perhaps, to heredity. He
was thinking about ecclesiastical matters, and when a man is in that
condition of mind he will take anybody's hat. The result was that the
whole afternoon I was under the influence of his clerical hat and could
not tell a lie. Of course, he was hard at it.
It is a compliment to both of us. His hat fitted me exactly; my hat
fitted him exactly. So I judge I was born to rise to high dignity in the
Church some how or other, but I do not know what he was born for. That
is an illustration of the influence of habit, and it is perceptible here
when they say "an" hospital, "an" European, "an" historical.
The business aspects of the Fourth of July is not perfect as it stands.
See what it costs us every year with loss of life, the crippling of
thousands with its fireworks, and the burning down of property. It is
not only sacred to patriotism and universal freedom, but to the surgeon,
the undertaker, the insurance offices--and they are working it for all it
is worth.
I am pleased to see that we have a cessation of war for the time. This
coming from me, a soldier, you will appreciate. I was a soldier in the
Southern war for two weeks, and when gentlemen get up to speak of the
great deeds our army and navy have recently done, why, it goes all
through me and fires up the old war spirit. I had in my first engagement
three horses shot under me. The next ones went over my head, the next
hit me in the back. Then I retired to meet an engagement.
I thank you, gentlemen, for making even a slight reference to the war
profession, in which I distinguished myself, short as my career was.
INDEPENDENCE DAY
The American Society in London gave a banquet, July 4, 1907, at
the Hotel Cecil. Ambassador Choate called on Mr. Clemens to
respond to the toast "The Day We Celebrate. "
MR. CHAIRMAN, MY LORD, AND GENTLEMEN,--Once more it happens, as it has
happened so often since I arrived in England a week or two ago,
that instead of celebrating the Fourth of July properly as has been
indicated, I have to first take care of my personal character. Sir
Mortimer Durand still remains unconvinced. Well, I tried to convince
these people from the beginning that I did not take the Ascot Cup; and
as I have failed to convince anybody that I did not take the cup, I
might as well confess I did take it and be done with it. I don't see why
this uncharitable feeling should follow me everywhere, and why I should
have that crime thrown up to me on all occasions. The tears that I have
wept over it ought to have created a different feeling than this--and,
besides, I don't think it is very right or fair that, considering
England has been trying to take a cup of ours for forty years--I don't
see why they should take so much trouble when I tried to go into the
business myself.
Sir Mortimer Durand, too, has had trouble from going to a dinner here,
and he has told you what he suffered in consequence. But what did he
suffer? He only missed his train, and one night of discomfort, and
he remembers it to this day. Oh! if you could only think what I have
suffered from a similar circumstance. Two or three years ago, in New
York, with that Society there which is made up of people from all
British Colonies, and from Great Britain generally, who were educated in
British colleges and British schools, I was there to respond to a toast
of some kind or other, and I did then what I have been in the habit of
doing, from a selfish motive, for a long time, and that is, I got myself
placed No, 3 in the list of speakers--then you get home early.
I had to go five miles up-river, and had to catch a particular train or
not get there. But see the magnanimity which is born in me, which I have
cultivated all my life. A very famous and very great British clergyman
came to me presently, and he said: "I am away down in the list; I have
got to catch a certain train this Saturday night; if I don't catch that
train I shall be carried beyond midnight and break the Sabbath. Won't
you change places with me? " I said: "Certainly I will. " I did it at
once. Now, see what happened.
Talk about Sir Mortimer Durand's sufferings for a single night! I have
suffered ever since because I saved that gentleman from breaking the
Sabbath-yes, saved him. I took his place, but I lost my train, and it
was I who broke the Sabbath. Up to that time I never had broken the
Sabbath in my life, and from that day to this I never have kept it.
Oh! I am learning much here to-night. I find I didn't know anything
about the American Society--that is, I didn't know its chief virtue.
I didn't know its chief virtue until his Excellency our Ambassador
revealed it--I may say, exposed it. I was intending to go home on the
13th of this month, but I look upon that in a different light now. I am
going to stay here until the American Society pays my passage.
Our Ambassador has spoken of our Fourth of July and the noise it makes.
We have got a double Fourth of July--a daylight Fourth and a midnight
Fourth. During the day in America, as our Ambassador has indicated, we
keep the Fourth of July properly in a reverent spirit. We devote it to
teaching our children patriotic things--reverence for the Declaration of
Independence. We honor the day all through the daylight hours, and
when night comes we dishonor it. Presently--before long--they are getting
nearly ready to begin now--on the Atlantic coast, when night shuts down,
that pandemonium will begin, and there will be noise, and noise, and
noise--all night long--and there will be more than noise there will be
people crippled, there will be people killed, there will be people who
will lose their eyes, and all through that permission which we give
to irresponsible boys to play with firearms and fire-crackers, and all
sorts of dangerous things: We turn that Fourth of July, alas! over
to rowdies to drink and get drunk and make the night hideous, and we
cripple and kill more people than you would imagine.
We probably began to celebrate our Fourth-of-July night in that way one
hundred and twenty-five years ago, and on every Fourth-of-July night
since these horrors have grown and grown, until now, in our five
thousand towns of America, somebody gets killed or crippled on every
Fourth-of-July night, besides those cases of sick persons whom we never
hear of, who die as the result of the noise or the shock. They cripple
and kill more people on the Fourth of July in America than they kill and
cripple in our wars nowadays, and there are no pensions for these folk.
And, too, we burn houses. Really we destroy more property on every
Fourth-of-July night than the whole of the United States was worth one
hundred and twenty-five years ago. Really our Fourth of July is our
day of mourning, our day of sorrow. Fifty thousand people who have lost
friends, or who have had friends crippled, receive that Fourth of July,
when it comes, as a day of mourning for the losses they have sustained
in their families.
I have suffered in that way myself. I have had relatives killed in that
way. One was in Chicago years ago--an uncle of mine, just as good an
uncle as I have ever had, and I had lots of them--yes, uncles to burn,
uncles to spare. This poor uncle, full of patriotism, opened his mouth
to hurrah, and a rocket went down his throat. Before that man could ask
for a drink of water to quench that thing, it blew up and scattered him
all over the forty-five States, and--really, now, this is true--I know
about it myself--twenty-four hours after that it was raining buttons,
recognizable as his, on the Atlantic seaboard. A person cannot have a
disaster like that and be entirely cheerful the rest of his life. I had
another uncle, on an entirely different Fourth of July, who was blown up
that way, and really it trimmed him as it would a tree. He had hardly a
limb left on him anywhere. All we have left now is an expurgated edition
of that uncle. But never mind about these things; they are merely
passing matters. Don't let me make you sad.
Sir Mortimer Durand said that you, the English people, gave up your
colonies over there--got tired of them--and did it with reluctance. Now I
wish you just to consider that he was right about that, and that he had
his reasons for saying that England did not look upon our Revolution as
a foreign war, but as a civil war fought by Englishmen.
Our Fourth of July which we honor so much, and which we love so much,
and which we take so much pride in, is an English institution, not an
American one, and it comes of a great ancestry. The first Fourth of July
in that noble genealogy dates back seven centuries lacking eight years.
That is the day of the Great Charter--the Magna Charta--which was born at
Runnymede in the next to the last year of King John, and portions of the
liberties secured thus by those hardy Barons from that reluctant King
John are a part of our Declaration of Independence, of our Fourth of
July, of our American liberties. And the second of those Fourths of July
was not born until four centuries later, in, Charles the First's time,
in the Bill of Rights, and that is ours, that is part of our liberties.
The next one was still English, in New England, where they established
that principle which remains with us to this day, and will continue to
remain with us--no taxation without representation. That is always going
to stand, and that the English Colonies in New England gave us.
The Fourth of July, and the one which you are celebrating now, born, in
Philadelphia on the 4th of July, 1776--that is English, too. It is not
American. Those were English colonists, subjects of King George III. ,
Englishmen at heart, who protested against the oppressions of the Home
Government. Though they proposed to cure those oppressions and remove
them, still remaining under the Crown, they were not intending a
revolution. The revolution was brought about by circumstances which
they could not control. The Declaration of Independence was written by
a British subject, every name signed to it was the name of a British
subject. There was not the name of a single American attached to the
Declaration of Independence--in fact, there was not an American in the
country in that day except the Indians out on the plains. They were
Englishmen, all Englishmen--Americans did not begin until seven years
later, when that Fourth of July had become seven years old, and then,
the American Republic was established. Since then, there have been
Americans. So you see what we owe to England in the matter of liberties.
We have, however, one Fourth of July which is absolutely our own, and
that is that great proclamation issued forty years ago by that great
American to whom Sir Mortimer Durand paid that just and beautiful
tribute--Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln's proclamation, which not only set the
black slaves free, but set the white man free also. The owner was set
free from the burden and offence, that sad condition of things where he
was in so many instances a master and owner of slaves when he did not
want to be. That proclamation set them all free. But even in this matter
England suggested it, for England had set her slaves free thirty years
before, and we followed her example. We always followed her example,
whether it was good or bad.
And it was an English judge that issued that other great proclamation,
and established that great principle that, when a slave, let him belong
to whom he may, and let him come whence he may, sets his foot upon
English soil, his fetters by that act fall away and he is a free man
before the world. We followed the example of 1833, and we freed our
slaves as I have said.
It is true, then, that all our Fourths of July, and we have five of
them, England gave to us, except that one that I have mentioned--the
Emancipation Proclamation, and, lest we forget, let us all remember that
we owe these things to England. Let us be able to say to Old England,
this great-hearted, venerable old mother of the race, you gave us our
Fourths of July that we love and that we honor and revere, you gave us
the Declaration of Independence, which is the Charter of our rights,
you, the venerable Mother of Liberties, the Protector of Anglo-Saxon
Freedom--you gave us these things, and we do most honestly thank you for
them.
AMERICANS AND THE ENGLISH
ADDRESS AT A GATHERING OF AMERICANS IN LONDON, JULY 4, 1872
MR. CHAIRMAN AND LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--I thank you for the compliment
which has just been tendered me, and to show my appreciation of it I
will not afflict you with many words. It is pleasant to celebrate in
this peaceful way, upon this old mother soil, the anniversary of an
experiment which was born of war with this same land so long ago, and
wrought out to a successful issue by the devotion of our ancestors. It
has taken nearly a hundred years to bring the English and Americans into
kindly and mutually appreciative relations, but I believe it has
been accomplished at last. It was a great step when the two last
misunderstandings were settled by arbitration instead of cannon. It
is another great step when England adopts our sewing-machines without
claiming the invention--as usual. It was another when they imported one
of our sleeping-cars the other day. And it warmed my heart more than
I can tell, yesterday, when I witnessed the spectacle of an Englishman
ordering an American sherry cobbler of his own free will and accord--and
not only that but with a great brain and a level head reminding the
barkeeper not to forget the strawberries. With a common origin, a common
language, a common literature, a common religion, and--common drinks,
what is longer needful to the cementing of the two nations together in a
permanent bond of brotherhood?
This is an age of progress, and ours is a progressive land. A great and
glorious land, too--a land which has developed a Washington, a Franklin,
a Wm. M. Tweed, a Longfellow, a Motley, a Jay Gould, a Samuel C.
Pomeroy, a recent Congress which has never had its equal (in some
respects), and a United States Army which conquered sixty Indians in
eight months by tiring them out which is much better than uncivilized
slaughter, God knows. We have a criminal jury system which is superior
to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty
of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read.
And I may observe that we have an insanity plea that would have
saved Cain. I think I can say, and say with pride, that we have some
legislatures that bring higher prices than any in the world.
I refer with effusion to our railway system, which consents to let
us live, though it might do the opposite, being our owners. It only
destroyed three thousand and seventy lives last year by collisions, and
twenty-seven thousand two hundred and sixty by running over heedless and
unnecessary people at crossings. The companies seriously regretted the
killing of these thirty thousand people, and went so far as to pay for
some of them--voluntarily, of course, for the meanest of us would not
claim that we possess a court treacherous enough to enforce a law
against a railway company. But, thank Heaven, the railway companies are
generally disposed to do the right and kindly thing without compulsion.
I know of an instance which greatly touched me at the time. After
an accident the company sent home the remains of a dear distant old
relative of mine in a basket, with the remark, "Please state what figure
you hold him at--and return the basket. " Now there couldn't be anything
friendlier than that.
But I must not stand here and brag all night. However, you won't mind a
body bragging a little about his country on the Fourth of July. It is a
fair and legitimate time to fly the eagle. I will say only one more
word of brag--and a hopeful one. It is this. We have a form of government
which gives each man a fair chance and no favor. With us no individual
is born with a right to look down upon his neighbor and hold him in
contempt. Let such of us as are not dukes find our consolation in that.
And we may find hope for the future in the fact that as unhappy as is
the condition of our political morality to-day, England has risen up out
of a far fouler since the days when Charles I. ennobled courtesans and
all political place was a matter of bargain and sale. There is hope for
us yet. *
*At least the above is the speech which I was going to make,
but our minister, General Schenck, presided, and after the
blessing, got up and made a great, long, inconceivably dull
harangue, and wound up by saying that inasmuch as speech-making
did not seem to exhilarate the guests much, all further oratory
would be dispensed with during the evening, and we could just
sit and talk privately to our elbow-neighbors and have a good,
sociable time. It is known that in consequence of that remark
forty-four perfected speeches died in the womb. The
depression, the gloom, the solemnity that reigned over the
banquet from that time forth will be a lasting memory with many
that were there. By that one thoughtless remark General
Schenck lost forty-four of the best friends he had in England.
More than one said that night: "And this is the sort of person
that is sent to represent us in a great sister empire! "
ABOUT LONDON
ADDRESS AT A DINNER GIVEN BY THE SAVAGE CLUB,
LONDON, SEPTEMBER 28, 1872.
Reported by Moncure D. Conway in the Cincinnati Commercial.
It affords me sincere pleasure to meet this distinguished club, a club
which has extended its hospitalities and its cordial welcome to so many
of my countrymen. I hope [and here the speaker's voice became low and
fluttering] you will excuse these clothes. I am going to the theatre;
that will explain these clothes. I have other clothes than these.
Judging human nature by what I have seen of it, I suppose that the
customary thing for a stranger to do when he stands here is to make a
pun on the name of this club, under the impression, of course, that he
is the first man that that idea has occurred to. It is a credit to our
human nature, not a blemish upon it; for it shows that underlying all
our depravity (and God knows and you know we are depraved enough) and
all our sophistication, and untarnished by them, there is a sweet germ
of innocence and simplicity still. When a stranger says to me, with
a glow of inspiration in his eye, some gentle, innocuous little thing
about "Twain and one flesh," and all that sort of thing, I don't try to
crush that man into the earth--no. I feel like saying: "Let me take you
by the hand, sir; let me embrace you; I have not heard that pun for
weeks. " We will deal in palpable puns. We will call parties named King
"Your Majesty," and we will say to the Smiths that we think we have
heard that name before somewhere. Such is human nature. We cannot alter
this. It is God that made us so for some good and wise purpose. Let us
not repine. But though I may seem strange, may seem eccentric, I mean to
refrain from punning upon the name of this club, though I could make a
very good one if I had time to think about it--a week.
I cannot express to you what entire enjoyment I find in this first visit
to this prodigious metropolis of yours. Its wonders seem to me to be
limitless. I go about as in a dream--as in a realm of enchantment--where
many things are rare and beautiful, and all things are strange and
marvellous. Hour after hour I stand--I stand spellbound, as it were--and
gaze upon the statuary in Leicester Square. [Leicester Square being a
horrible chaos, with the relic of an equestrian statue in the centre,
the king being headless and limbless, and the horse in little better
condition. ] I visit the mortuary effigies of noble old Henry VIII. , and
Judge Jeffreys, and the preserved gorilla, and try to make up my mind
which of my ancestors I admire the most. I go to that matchless Hyde
Park and drive all around it, and then I start to enter it at the Marble
Arch---and--am induced to "change my mind. " [Cabs are not permitted in
Hyde Park--nothing less aristocratic than a private carriage. ] It is a
great benefaction--is Hyde Park. There, in his hansom cab, the invalid
can go--the poor, sad child of misfortune--and insert his nose between the
railings, and breathe the pure, health-giving air of the country and of
heaven. And if he is a swell invalid, who isn't obliged to depend upon
parks for his country air, he can drive inside--if he owns his vehicle.
I drive round and round Hyde Park, and the more I see of the edges of it
the more grateful I am that the margin is extensive.
And I have been to the Zoological Gardens. What a wonderful place that
is! I never have seen such a curious and interesting variety of wild
animals in any garden before--except "Mabilie. " I never believed before
there were so many different kinds of animals in the world as you
can find there--and I don't believe it yet. I have been to the British
Museum. I would advise you to drop in there some time when you have
nothing to do for--five minutes--if you have never been there: It seems
to me the noblest monument that this nation has yet erected to her
greatness. I say to her, our greatness--as a nation. True, she has built
other monuments, and stately ones, as well; but these she has uplifted
in honor of two or three colossal demigods who have stalked across the
world's stage, destroying tyrants and delivering nations, and whose
prodigies will still live in the memories of men ages after their
monuments shall have crumbled to dust--I refer to the Wellington and
Nelson monuments, and--the Albert memorial. [Sarcasm. The Albert memorial
is the finest monument in the world, and celebrates the existence of as
commonplace a person as good luck ever lifted out of obscurity. ]
The library at the British Museum I find particularly astounding. I have
read there hours together, and hardly made an impression on it. I revere
that library. It is the author's friend. I don't care how mean a book
is, it always takes one copy. [A copy of every book printed in Great
Britain must by law be sent to the British Museum, a law much complained
of by publishers. ] And then every day that author goes there to gaze
at that book, and is encouraged to go on in the good work. And what a
touching sight it is of a Saturday afternoon to see the poor, careworn
clergymen gathered together in that vast reading-room cabbaging sermons
for Sunday. You will pardon my referring to these things.
Everything in this monster city interests me, and I cannot keep from
talking, even at the risk of being instructive. People here seem always
to express distances by parables. To a stranger it is just a little
confusing to be so parabolic--so to speak.
the tongue would be the most that you would get from me. I have always
tried hard and faithfully to improve my English and never to degrade it.
I always try to use the best English to describe what I think and what I
feel, or what I don't feel and what I don't think.
I am not one of those who in expressing opinions confine themselves to
facts. I don't know anything that mars good literature so completely as
too much truth. Facts contain a deal of poetry, but you can't use too
many of them without damaging your literature. I love all literature,
and as long as I am a doctor of literature--I have suggested to you for
twenty years I have been diligently trying to improve my own literature,
and now, by virtue of the University of Oxford, I mean to doctor
everybody else's.
Now I think I ought to apologize for my clothes. At home I venture
things that I am not permitted by my family to venture in foreign parts.
I was instructed before I left home and ordered to refrain from white
clothes in England. I meant to keep that command fair and clean, and I
would have done it if I had been in the habit of obeying instructions,
but I can't invent a new process in life right away. I have not had
white clothes on since I crossed the ocean until now.
In these three or four weeks I have grown so tired of gray and black
that you have earned my gratitude in permitting me to come as I have. I
wear white clothes in the depth of winter in my home, but I don't go out
in the streets in them. I don't go out to attract too much attention.
I like to attract some, and always I would like to be dressed so that I
may be more conspicuous than anybody else.
If I had been an ancient Briton, I would not have contented myself with
blue paint, but I would have bankrupted the rainbow. I so enjoy gay
clothes in which women clothe themselves that it always grieves me when
I go to the opera to see that, while women look like a flower-bed, the
men are a few gray stumps among them in their black evening dress. These
are two or three reasons why I wish to wear white clothes: When I find
myself in assemblies like this, with everybody in black clothes, I know
I possess something that is superior to everybody else's. Clothes are
never clean. You don't know whether they are clean or not, because you
can't see.
Here or anywhere you must scour your head every two or three days or
it is full of grit. Your clothes must collect just as much dirt as your
hair. If you wear white clothes you are clean, and your cleaning bill
gets so heavy that you have to take care. I am proud to say that I can
wear a white suit of clothes without a blemish for three days. If you
need any further instruction in the matter of clothes I shall be glad to
give it to you. I hope I have convinced some of you that it is just as
well to wear white clothes as any other kind. I do not want to boast. I
only want to make you understand that you are not clean.
As to age, the fact that I am nearly seventy-two years old does not
clearly indicate how old I am, because part of every day--it is with
me as with you, you try to describe your age, and you cannot do it.
Sometimes you are only fifteen; sometimes you are twenty-five. It is
very seldom in a day that I am seventy-two years old. I am older now
sometimes than I was when I used to rob orchards; a thing which I would
not do to-day--if the orchards were watched. I am so glad to be here
to-night. I am so glad to renew with the Savages that now ancient time
when I first sat with a company of this club in London in 1872. That is
a long time ago. But I did stay with the Savages a night in London long
ago, and as I had come into a very strange land, and was with friends,
as I could see, that has always remained in my mind as a peculiarly
blessed evening, since it brought me into contact with men of my own
kind and my own feelings.
I am glad to be here, and to see you all again, because it is very
likely that I shall not see you again. It is easier than I thought to
come across the Atlantic. I have been received, as you know, in the most
delightfully generous way in England ever since I came here. It keeps
me choked up all the time. Everybody is so generous, and they do seem
to give you such a hearty welcome. Nobody in the world can appreciate it
higher than I do. It did not wait till I got to London, but when I came
ashore at Tilbury the stevedores on the dock raised the first welcome--a
good and hearty welcome from the men who do the heavy labor in the
world, and save you and me having to do it. They are the men who with
their hands build empires and make them prosper. It is because of them
that the others are wealthy and can live in luxury. They received me
with a "Hurrah! " that went to my heart. They are the men that build
civilization, and without them no civilization can be built. So I came
first to the authors and creators of civilization, and I blessedly end
this happy meeting with the Savages who destroy it.
GENERAL MILES AND THE DOG
Mr. Clemens was the guest of honor at a dinner given by the
Pleiades Club at the Hotel Brevoort, December 22, 1907. The
toastmaster introduced the guest of the evening with a high
tribute to his place in American literature, saying that he was
dear to the hearts of all Americans.
It is hard work to make a speech when you have listened to compliments
from the powers in authority. A compliment is a hard text to preach to.
When the chairman introduces me as a person of merit, and when he says
pleasant things about me, I always feel like answering simply that what
he says is true; that it is all right; that, as far as I am concerned,
the things he said can stand as they are. But you always have to say
something, and that is what frightens me.
I remember out in Sydney once having to respond to some complimentary
toast, and my one desire was to turn in my tracks like any other
worm--and run, for it. I was remembering that occasion at a later date
when I had to introduce a speaker. Hoping, then, to spur his speech by
putting him, in joke, on the defensive, I accused him in my introduction
of everything I thought it impossible for him to have committed. When I
finished there was an awful calm. I had been telling his life history by
mistake.
One must keep up one's character. Earn a character first if you can,
and if you can't, then assume one. From the code of morals I have been
following and revising and revising for seventy-two years I remember
one detail. All my life I have been honest--comparatively honest. I could
never use money I had not made honestly--I could only lend it.
Last spring I met General Miles again, and he commented on the fact that
we had known each other thirty years. He said it was strange that we had
not met years before, when we had both been in Washington. At that point
I changed the subject, and I changed it with art. But the facts are
these:
I was then under contract for my Innocents Abroad, but did not have a
cent to live on while I wrote it. So I went to Washington to do a little
journalism. There I met an equally poor friend, William Davidson, who
had not a single vice, unless you call it a vice in a Scot to love
Scotch. Together we devised the first and original newspaper syndicate,
selling two letters a week to twelve newspapers and getting $1 a letter.
That $24 a week would have been enough for us--if we had not had to
support the jug.
But there was a day when we felt that we must have $3 right away--$3
at once. That was how I met the General. It doesn't matter now what
we wanted so much money at one time for, but that Scot and I did
occasionally want it. The Scot sent me out one day to get it. He had a
great belief in Providence, that Scottish friend of mine. He said: "The
Lord will provide. "
I had given up trying to find the money lying about, and was in a hotel
lobby in despair, when I saw a beautiful unfriended dog. The dog saw
me, too, and at once we became acquainted. Then General Miles came in,
admired the dog, and asked me to price it. I priced it at $3. He offered
me an opportunity to reconsider the value of the beautiful animal, but I
refused to take more than Providence knew I needed. The General carried
the dog to his room.
Then came in a sweet little middle-aged man, who at once began looking
around the lobby.
"Did you lose a dog? " I asked. He said he had.
"I think I could find it," I volunteered, "for a small sum. "
"'How much? '" he asked. And I told him $3.
He urged me to accept more, but I did not wish to outdo Providence. Then
I went to the General's room and asked for the dog back. He was very
angry, and wanted to know why I had sold him a dog that did not belong
to me.
"That's a singular question to ask me, sir," I replied. "Didn't you ask
me to sell him? You started it. " And he let me have him. I gave him back
his $3 and returned the dog, collect, to its owner. That second $3 I
carried home to the Scot, and we enjoyed it, but the first $3, the money
I got from the General, I would have had to lend.
The General seemed not to remember my part in that adventure, and I
never had the heart to tell him about it.
WHEN IN DOUBT, TELL THE TRUTH
Mark Twain's speech at the dinner of the "Freundschaft
Society," March 9, 1906, had as a basis the words of
introduction used by Toastmaster Frank, who, referring to
Pudd'nhead Wilson, used the phrase, "When in doubt, tell the
truth. "
MR. CHAIRMAN, Mr. PUTZEL, AND GENTLEMEN OF THE FREUNDSCHAFT,--That maxim
I did invent, but never expected it to be applied to me. I did say,
"When you are in doubt," but when I am in doubt myself I use more
sagacity.
Mr. Grout suggested that if I have anything to say against Mr. Putzel,
or any criticism of his career or his character, I am the last person to
come out on account of that maxim and tell the truth. That is altogether
a mistake.
I do think it is right for other people to be virtuous so that they can
be happy hereafter, but if I knew every impropriety that even Mr. Putzel
has committed in his life, I would not mention one of them. My judgment
has been maturing for seventy years, and I have got to that point where
I know better than that.
Mr. Putzel stands related to me in a very tender way (through the tax
office), and it does not behoove me to say anything which could by any
possibility militate against that condition of things.
Now, that word--taxes, taxes, taxes! I have heard it to-night. I have
heard it all night. I wish somebody would change that subject; that is a
very sore subject to me.
I was so relieved when judge Leventritt did find something that was not
taxable--when he said that the commissioner could not tax your patience.
And that comforted me. We've got so much taxation. I don't know of
a single foreign product that enters this country untaxed except the
answer to prayer.
On an occasion like this the proprieties require that you merely pay
compliments to the guest of the occasion, and I am merely here to pay
compliments to the guest of the occasion, not to criticise him in any
way, and I can say only complimentary things to him.
When I went down to the tax office some time ago, for the first time
in New York, I saw Mr. Putzel sitting in the "Seat of Perjury. " I
recognized him right away. I warmed to him on the spot. I didn't
know that I had ever seen him before, but just as soon as I saw him I
recognized him. I had met him twenty-five years before, and at that time
had achieved a knowledge of his abilities and something more than that.
I thought: "Now, this is the man whom I saw twenty-five years ago. "
On that occasion I not only went free at his hands, but carried off
something more than that. I hoped it would happen again.
It was twenty-five years ago when I saw a young clerk in Putnam's
bookstore. I went in there and asked for George Haven Putnam, and handed
him my card, and then the young man said Mr. Putnam was busy and I
couldn't see him. Well, I had merely called in a social way, and so it
didn't matter.
I was going out when I saw a great big, fat, interesting-looking book
lying there, and I took it up. It was an account of the invasion
of England in the fourteenth century by the Preaching Friar, and it
interested me.
I asked him the price of it, and he said four dollars.
"Well," I said, "what discount do you allow to publishers? "
He said: "Forty percent. off. "
I said: "All right, I am a publisher. "
He put down the figure, forty per cent. off, on a card.
Then I said: "What discount do you allow to authors? "
He said: "Forty per cent. off. "
"Well," I said, "set me down as an author. "
"Now," said I, "what discount do you allow to the clergy? "
He said: "Forty per cent. off. "
I said to him that I was only on the road, and that I was studying for
the ministry. I asked him wouldn't he knock off twenty per cent. for
that. He set down the figure, and he never smiled once.
I was working off these humorous brilliancies on him and getting no
return--not a scintillation in his eye, not a spark of recognition of
what I was doing there. I was almost in despair.
I thought I might try him once more, so I said "Now, I am also a member
of the human race. Will you let me have the ten per cent. off for that? "
He set it down, and never smiled.
Well, I gave it up. I said: "There is my card with my address on it,
but I have not any money with me. Will you please send the bill to
Hartford? " I took up the book and was going away.
He said: "Wait a minute. There is forty cents coming to you. "
When I met him in the tax office I thought maybe I could make something
again, but I could not. But I had not any idea I could when I came, and
as it turned out I did get off entirely free.
I put up my hand and made a statement. It gave me a good deal of pain
to do that. I was not used to it. I was born and reared in the higher
circles of Missouri, and there we don't do such things--didn't in my
time, but we have got that little matter settled--got a sort of tax
levied on me.
Then he touched me. Yes, he touched me this time, because he
cried--cried! He was moved to tears to see that I, a virtuous person only
a year before, after immersion for one year--during one year in the New
York morals--had no more conscience than a millionaire.
THE DAY WE CELEBRATE
ADDRESS AT THE FOURTH-OF-JULY DINNER OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY,
LONDON, 1899.
I noticed in Ambassador Choate's speech that he said: "You may be
Americans or Englishmen, but you cannot be both at the same time. " You
responded by applause.
Consider the effect of a short residence here. I find the Ambassador
rises first to speak to a toast, followed by a Senator, and I come
third. What a subtle tribute that to monarchial influence of the country
when you place rank above respectability!
I was born modest, and if I had not been things like this would force it
upon me. I understand it quite well. I am here to see that between them
they do justice to the day we celebrate, and in case they do not I must
do it myself. But I notice they have considered this day merely from one
side--its sentimental, patriotic, poetic side. But it has another side.
It has a commercial, a business side that needs reforming. It has a
historical side.
I do not say "an" historical side, because I am speaking the American
language. I do not see why our cousins should continue to say "an"
hospital, "an" historical fact, "an" horse. It seems to me the Congress
of Women, now in session, should look to it. I think "an" is having a
little too much to do with it. It comes of habit, which accounts for
many things.
Yesterday, for example, I was at a luncheon party. At the end of the
party a great dignitary of the English Established Church went away half
an hour before anybody else and carried off my hat. Now, that was an
innocent act on his part. He went out first, and of course had the
choice of hats. As a rule I try to get out first myself. But I hold that
it was an innocent, unconscious act, due, perhaps, to heredity. He
was thinking about ecclesiastical matters, and when a man is in that
condition of mind he will take anybody's hat. The result was that the
whole afternoon I was under the influence of his clerical hat and could
not tell a lie. Of course, he was hard at it.
It is a compliment to both of us. His hat fitted me exactly; my hat
fitted him exactly. So I judge I was born to rise to high dignity in the
Church some how or other, but I do not know what he was born for. That
is an illustration of the influence of habit, and it is perceptible here
when they say "an" hospital, "an" European, "an" historical.
The business aspects of the Fourth of July is not perfect as it stands.
See what it costs us every year with loss of life, the crippling of
thousands with its fireworks, and the burning down of property. It is
not only sacred to patriotism and universal freedom, but to the surgeon,
the undertaker, the insurance offices--and they are working it for all it
is worth.
I am pleased to see that we have a cessation of war for the time. This
coming from me, a soldier, you will appreciate. I was a soldier in the
Southern war for two weeks, and when gentlemen get up to speak of the
great deeds our army and navy have recently done, why, it goes all
through me and fires up the old war spirit. I had in my first engagement
three horses shot under me. The next ones went over my head, the next
hit me in the back. Then I retired to meet an engagement.
I thank you, gentlemen, for making even a slight reference to the war
profession, in which I distinguished myself, short as my career was.
INDEPENDENCE DAY
The American Society in London gave a banquet, July 4, 1907, at
the Hotel Cecil. Ambassador Choate called on Mr. Clemens to
respond to the toast "The Day We Celebrate. "
MR. CHAIRMAN, MY LORD, AND GENTLEMEN,--Once more it happens, as it has
happened so often since I arrived in England a week or two ago,
that instead of celebrating the Fourth of July properly as has been
indicated, I have to first take care of my personal character. Sir
Mortimer Durand still remains unconvinced. Well, I tried to convince
these people from the beginning that I did not take the Ascot Cup; and
as I have failed to convince anybody that I did not take the cup, I
might as well confess I did take it and be done with it. I don't see why
this uncharitable feeling should follow me everywhere, and why I should
have that crime thrown up to me on all occasions. The tears that I have
wept over it ought to have created a different feeling than this--and,
besides, I don't think it is very right or fair that, considering
England has been trying to take a cup of ours for forty years--I don't
see why they should take so much trouble when I tried to go into the
business myself.
Sir Mortimer Durand, too, has had trouble from going to a dinner here,
and he has told you what he suffered in consequence. But what did he
suffer? He only missed his train, and one night of discomfort, and
he remembers it to this day. Oh! if you could only think what I have
suffered from a similar circumstance. Two or three years ago, in New
York, with that Society there which is made up of people from all
British Colonies, and from Great Britain generally, who were educated in
British colleges and British schools, I was there to respond to a toast
of some kind or other, and I did then what I have been in the habit of
doing, from a selfish motive, for a long time, and that is, I got myself
placed No, 3 in the list of speakers--then you get home early.
I had to go five miles up-river, and had to catch a particular train or
not get there. But see the magnanimity which is born in me, which I have
cultivated all my life. A very famous and very great British clergyman
came to me presently, and he said: "I am away down in the list; I have
got to catch a certain train this Saturday night; if I don't catch that
train I shall be carried beyond midnight and break the Sabbath. Won't
you change places with me? " I said: "Certainly I will. " I did it at
once. Now, see what happened.
Talk about Sir Mortimer Durand's sufferings for a single night! I have
suffered ever since because I saved that gentleman from breaking the
Sabbath-yes, saved him. I took his place, but I lost my train, and it
was I who broke the Sabbath. Up to that time I never had broken the
Sabbath in my life, and from that day to this I never have kept it.
Oh! I am learning much here to-night. I find I didn't know anything
about the American Society--that is, I didn't know its chief virtue.
I didn't know its chief virtue until his Excellency our Ambassador
revealed it--I may say, exposed it. I was intending to go home on the
13th of this month, but I look upon that in a different light now. I am
going to stay here until the American Society pays my passage.
Our Ambassador has spoken of our Fourth of July and the noise it makes.
We have got a double Fourth of July--a daylight Fourth and a midnight
Fourth. During the day in America, as our Ambassador has indicated, we
keep the Fourth of July properly in a reverent spirit. We devote it to
teaching our children patriotic things--reverence for the Declaration of
Independence. We honor the day all through the daylight hours, and
when night comes we dishonor it. Presently--before long--they are getting
nearly ready to begin now--on the Atlantic coast, when night shuts down,
that pandemonium will begin, and there will be noise, and noise, and
noise--all night long--and there will be more than noise there will be
people crippled, there will be people killed, there will be people who
will lose their eyes, and all through that permission which we give
to irresponsible boys to play with firearms and fire-crackers, and all
sorts of dangerous things: We turn that Fourth of July, alas! over
to rowdies to drink and get drunk and make the night hideous, and we
cripple and kill more people than you would imagine.
We probably began to celebrate our Fourth-of-July night in that way one
hundred and twenty-five years ago, and on every Fourth-of-July night
since these horrors have grown and grown, until now, in our five
thousand towns of America, somebody gets killed or crippled on every
Fourth-of-July night, besides those cases of sick persons whom we never
hear of, who die as the result of the noise or the shock. They cripple
and kill more people on the Fourth of July in America than they kill and
cripple in our wars nowadays, and there are no pensions for these folk.
And, too, we burn houses. Really we destroy more property on every
Fourth-of-July night than the whole of the United States was worth one
hundred and twenty-five years ago. Really our Fourth of July is our
day of mourning, our day of sorrow. Fifty thousand people who have lost
friends, or who have had friends crippled, receive that Fourth of July,
when it comes, as a day of mourning for the losses they have sustained
in their families.
I have suffered in that way myself. I have had relatives killed in that
way. One was in Chicago years ago--an uncle of mine, just as good an
uncle as I have ever had, and I had lots of them--yes, uncles to burn,
uncles to spare. This poor uncle, full of patriotism, opened his mouth
to hurrah, and a rocket went down his throat. Before that man could ask
for a drink of water to quench that thing, it blew up and scattered him
all over the forty-five States, and--really, now, this is true--I know
about it myself--twenty-four hours after that it was raining buttons,
recognizable as his, on the Atlantic seaboard. A person cannot have a
disaster like that and be entirely cheerful the rest of his life. I had
another uncle, on an entirely different Fourth of July, who was blown up
that way, and really it trimmed him as it would a tree. He had hardly a
limb left on him anywhere. All we have left now is an expurgated edition
of that uncle. But never mind about these things; they are merely
passing matters. Don't let me make you sad.
Sir Mortimer Durand said that you, the English people, gave up your
colonies over there--got tired of them--and did it with reluctance. Now I
wish you just to consider that he was right about that, and that he had
his reasons for saying that England did not look upon our Revolution as
a foreign war, but as a civil war fought by Englishmen.
Our Fourth of July which we honor so much, and which we love so much,
and which we take so much pride in, is an English institution, not an
American one, and it comes of a great ancestry. The first Fourth of July
in that noble genealogy dates back seven centuries lacking eight years.
That is the day of the Great Charter--the Magna Charta--which was born at
Runnymede in the next to the last year of King John, and portions of the
liberties secured thus by those hardy Barons from that reluctant King
John are a part of our Declaration of Independence, of our Fourth of
July, of our American liberties. And the second of those Fourths of July
was not born until four centuries later, in, Charles the First's time,
in the Bill of Rights, and that is ours, that is part of our liberties.
The next one was still English, in New England, where they established
that principle which remains with us to this day, and will continue to
remain with us--no taxation without representation. That is always going
to stand, and that the English Colonies in New England gave us.
The Fourth of July, and the one which you are celebrating now, born, in
Philadelphia on the 4th of July, 1776--that is English, too. It is not
American. Those were English colonists, subjects of King George III. ,
Englishmen at heart, who protested against the oppressions of the Home
Government. Though they proposed to cure those oppressions and remove
them, still remaining under the Crown, they were not intending a
revolution. The revolution was brought about by circumstances which
they could not control. The Declaration of Independence was written by
a British subject, every name signed to it was the name of a British
subject. There was not the name of a single American attached to the
Declaration of Independence--in fact, there was not an American in the
country in that day except the Indians out on the plains. They were
Englishmen, all Englishmen--Americans did not begin until seven years
later, when that Fourth of July had become seven years old, and then,
the American Republic was established. Since then, there have been
Americans. So you see what we owe to England in the matter of liberties.
We have, however, one Fourth of July which is absolutely our own, and
that is that great proclamation issued forty years ago by that great
American to whom Sir Mortimer Durand paid that just and beautiful
tribute--Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln's proclamation, which not only set the
black slaves free, but set the white man free also. The owner was set
free from the burden and offence, that sad condition of things where he
was in so many instances a master and owner of slaves when he did not
want to be. That proclamation set them all free. But even in this matter
England suggested it, for England had set her slaves free thirty years
before, and we followed her example. We always followed her example,
whether it was good or bad.
And it was an English judge that issued that other great proclamation,
and established that great principle that, when a slave, let him belong
to whom he may, and let him come whence he may, sets his foot upon
English soil, his fetters by that act fall away and he is a free man
before the world. We followed the example of 1833, and we freed our
slaves as I have said.
It is true, then, that all our Fourths of July, and we have five of
them, England gave to us, except that one that I have mentioned--the
Emancipation Proclamation, and, lest we forget, let us all remember that
we owe these things to England. Let us be able to say to Old England,
this great-hearted, venerable old mother of the race, you gave us our
Fourths of July that we love and that we honor and revere, you gave us
the Declaration of Independence, which is the Charter of our rights,
you, the venerable Mother of Liberties, the Protector of Anglo-Saxon
Freedom--you gave us these things, and we do most honestly thank you for
them.
AMERICANS AND THE ENGLISH
ADDRESS AT A GATHERING OF AMERICANS IN LONDON, JULY 4, 1872
MR. CHAIRMAN AND LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--I thank you for the compliment
which has just been tendered me, and to show my appreciation of it I
will not afflict you with many words. It is pleasant to celebrate in
this peaceful way, upon this old mother soil, the anniversary of an
experiment which was born of war with this same land so long ago, and
wrought out to a successful issue by the devotion of our ancestors. It
has taken nearly a hundred years to bring the English and Americans into
kindly and mutually appreciative relations, but I believe it has
been accomplished at last. It was a great step when the two last
misunderstandings were settled by arbitration instead of cannon. It
is another great step when England adopts our sewing-machines without
claiming the invention--as usual. It was another when they imported one
of our sleeping-cars the other day. And it warmed my heart more than
I can tell, yesterday, when I witnessed the spectacle of an Englishman
ordering an American sherry cobbler of his own free will and accord--and
not only that but with a great brain and a level head reminding the
barkeeper not to forget the strawberries. With a common origin, a common
language, a common literature, a common religion, and--common drinks,
what is longer needful to the cementing of the two nations together in a
permanent bond of brotherhood?
This is an age of progress, and ours is a progressive land. A great and
glorious land, too--a land which has developed a Washington, a Franklin,
a Wm. M. Tweed, a Longfellow, a Motley, a Jay Gould, a Samuel C.
Pomeroy, a recent Congress which has never had its equal (in some
respects), and a United States Army which conquered sixty Indians in
eight months by tiring them out which is much better than uncivilized
slaughter, God knows. We have a criminal jury system which is superior
to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty
of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read.
And I may observe that we have an insanity plea that would have
saved Cain. I think I can say, and say with pride, that we have some
legislatures that bring higher prices than any in the world.
I refer with effusion to our railway system, which consents to let
us live, though it might do the opposite, being our owners. It only
destroyed three thousand and seventy lives last year by collisions, and
twenty-seven thousand two hundred and sixty by running over heedless and
unnecessary people at crossings. The companies seriously regretted the
killing of these thirty thousand people, and went so far as to pay for
some of them--voluntarily, of course, for the meanest of us would not
claim that we possess a court treacherous enough to enforce a law
against a railway company. But, thank Heaven, the railway companies are
generally disposed to do the right and kindly thing without compulsion.
I know of an instance which greatly touched me at the time. After
an accident the company sent home the remains of a dear distant old
relative of mine in a basket, with the remark, "Please state what figure
you hold him at--and return the basket. " Now there couldn't be anything
friendlier than that.
But I must not stand here and brag all night. However, you won't mind a
body bragging a little about his country on the Fourth of July. It is a
fair and legitimate time to fly the eagle. I will say only one more
word of brag--and a hopeful one. It is this. We have a form of government
which gives each man a fair chance and no favor. With us no individual
is born with a right to look down upon his neighbor and hold him in
contempt. Let such of us as are not dukes find our consolation in that.
And we may find hope for the future in the fact that as unhappy as is
the condition of our political morality to-day, England has risen up out
of a far fouler since the days when Charles I. ennobled courtesans and
all political place was a matter of bargain and sale. There is hope for
us yet. *
*At least the above is the speech which I was going to make,
but our minister, General Schenck, presided, and after the
blessing, got up and made a great, long, inconceivably dull
harangue, and wound up by saying that inasmuch as speech-making
did not seem to exhilarate the guests much, all further oratory
would be dispensed with during the evening, and we could just
sit and talk privately to our elbow-neighbors and have a good,
sociable time. It is known that in consequence of that remark
forty-four perfected speeches died in the womb. The
depression, the gloom, the solemnity that reigned over the
banquet from that time forth will be a lasting memory with many
that were there. By that one thoughtless remark General
Schenck lost forty-four of the best friends he had in England.
More than one said that night: "And this is the sort of person
that is sent to represent us in a great sister empire! "
ABOUT LONDON
ADDRESS AT A DINNER GIVEN BY THE SAVAGE CLUB,
LONDON, SEPTEMBER 28, 1872.
Reported by Moncure D. Conway in the Cincinnati Commercial.
It affords me sincere pleasure to meet this distinguished club, a club
which has extended its hospitalities and its cordial welcome to so many
of my countrymen. I hope [and here the speaker's voice became low and
fluttering] you will excuse these clothes. I am going to the theatre;
that will explain these clothes. I have other clothes than these.
Judging human nature by what I have seen of it, I suppose that the
customary thing for a stranger to do when he stands here is to make a
pun on the name of this club, under the impression, of course, that he
is the first man that that idea has occurred to. It is a credit to our
human nature, not a blemish upon it; for it shows that underlying all
our depravity (and God knows and you know we are depraved enough) and
all our sophistication, and untarnished by them, there is a sweet germ
of innocence and simplicity still. When a stranger says to me, with
a glow of inspiration in his eye, some gentle, innocuous little thing
about "Twain and one flesh," and all that sort of thing, I don't try to
crush that man into the earth--no. I feel like saying: "Let me take you
by the hand, sir; let me embrace you; I have not heard that pun for
weeks. " We will deal in palpable puns. We will call parties named King
"Your Majesty," and we will say to the Smiths that we think we have
heard that name before somewhere. Such is human nature. We cannot alter
this. It is God that made us so for some good and wise purpose. Let us
not repine. But though I may seem strange, may seem eccentric, I mean to
refrain from punning upon the name of this club, though I could make a
very good one if I had time to think about it--a week.
I cannot express to you what entire enjoyment I find in this first visit
to this prodigious metropolis of yours. Its wonders seem to me to be
limitless. I go about as in a dream--as in a realm of enchantment--where
many things are rare and beautiful, and all things are strange and
marvellous. Hour after hour I stand--I stand spellbound, as it were--and
gaze upon the statuary in Leicester Square. [Leicester Square being a
horrible chaos, with the relic of an equestrian statue in the centre,
the king being headless and limbless, and the horse in little better
condition. ] I visit the mortuary effigies of noble old Henry VIII. , and
Judge Jeffreys, and the preserved gorilla, and try to make up my mind
which of my ancestors I admire the most. I go to that matchless Hyde
Park and drive all around it, and then I start to enter it at the Marble
Arch---and--am induced to "change my mind. " [Cabs are not permitted in
Hyde Park--nothing less aristocratic than a private carriage. ] It is a
great benefaction--is Hyde Park. There, in his hansom cab, the invalid
can go--the poor, sad child of misfortune--and insert his nose between the
railings, and breathe the pure, health-giving air of the country and of
heaven. And if he is a swell invalid, who isn't obliged to depend upon
parks for his country air, he can drive inside--if he owns his vehicle.
I drive round and round Hyde Park, and the more I see of the edges of it
the more grateful I am that the margin is extensive.
And I have been to the Zoological Gardens. What a wonderful place that
is! I never have seen such a curious and interesting variety of wild
animals in any garden before--except "Mabilie. " I never believed before
there were so many different kinds of animals in the world as you
can find there--and I don't believe it yet. I have been to the British
Museum. I would advise you to drop in there some time when you have
nothing to do for--five minutes--if you have never been there: It seems
to me the noblest monument that this nation has yet erected to her
greatness. I say to her, our greatness--as a nation. True, she has built
other monuments, and stately ones, as well; but these she has uplifted
in honor of two or three colossal demigods who have stalked across the
world's stage, destroying tyrants and delivering nations, and whose
prodigies will still live in the memories of men ages after their
monuments shall have crumbled to dust--I refer to the Wellington and
Nelson monuments, and--the Albert memorial. [Sarcasm. The Albert memorial
is the finest monument in the world, and celebrates the existence of as
commonplace a person as good luck ever lifted out of obscurity. ]
The library at the British Museum I find particularly astounding. I have
read there hours together, and hardly made an impression on it. I revere
that library. It is the author's friend. I don't care how mean a book
is, it always takes one copy. [A copy of every book printed in Great
Britain must by law be sent to the British Museum, a law much complained
of by publishers. ] And then every day that author goes there to gaze
at that book, and is encouraged to go on in the good work. And what a
touching sight it is of a Saturday afternoon to see the poor, careworn
clergymen gathered together in that vast reading-room cabbaging sermons
for Sunday. You will pardon my referring to these things.
Everything in this monster city interests me, and I cannot keep from
talking, even at the risk of being instructive. People here seem always
to express distances by parables. To a stranger it is just a little
confusing to be so parabolic--so to speak.
